"Anger is never without reason, but seldom with a good one."
Benjamin Franklin
Parenting provides us with powerful prospects for practicing patience. Few parents are immune to sporadic, or sometimes regular, outbursts of anger. After all, we can only ask so many times for a room to be tidied, a table to be cleared, a child to go to bed, and so on, before it all becomes too much.
As a child my mother taught me a powerful lesson about being angry - Anger costs." This was vividly demonstrated to me one day when I took a lump of wood to my surfboard in anger. As I have considered anger in my own family experiences since becoming a father, the costs seem far greater than some damaged foam and fibreglass. Instead, the costs of anger involve my own wellbeing, and the happiness of my children.
A mentor and friend of mine, Dr. H. Wallace Goddard, has catalogued five myths about anger in his book, Soft-Spoken Parenting. I have summarised them below.
